Carta para o Wall Street Journal

Honey, I Audited the Children!
13 January 2007
The Wall Street Journal

If tracking allowances is a problem for parents it says more about their own accounting system, or lack of it, than about their kids ("Allowance 2.0," Pursuits, Jan. 6). My 14-year-old daughter must tabulate what comes in (allowance plus job) and what goes out (expenditures) on a spreadsheet monthly. If she doesn't do it or it doesn't pass my audit, then there is no allowance until she does pass.

Double-entry bookkeeping, which goes back centuries, marked a major financial advance, and parents who don't teach their kids some variation of it are derelict. It's fun, and gratifying, to see my daughter struggle to get her tabulation to be consistent from one month to the next. When she grasps what is involved, it will scale up to her own household, or even a business when she reaches adulthood.

Samuel Burkeen

Reston, Va.